Fun Fact: There is a lot to be said about Iba N’Diaye…he co-founded the Ecole du Dakar, inspired Mor Faye and felt strongly against primitivist art.His works openly used western modernist fine art technique; they could be moody, executed in an agitated thick impasto, or whimsical and painterly, in muted gouaches or watercolors

Quote:

Notably to my young colleagues, I would give several words of advice: be on guard against those who insist that you must be “Africans” before being painters or sculptors,for those who, in the name of authenticity … continue to want to preserve you in an exotic garden. We are not born more talented than others, the majority of us do not come from traditional artistic families, but rather we are sons of African cities, which were created, for the most part, in the colonial era, and were crucibles of an original culture, in which … foreign or indigenous cultural contributions dominate…. you have a very great responsibility: to make our profession legitimate in the eyes of our fellow countrymen, and in those of men from all the continents, making us masters of techniques which alone will permit us to renew ourselves and to give us the courage to advance the iconographic themes of contemporary Africa …